Sunflowers
by Red River
Summary: Do you like sunflowers, too, Sasuke? Another one-shot, mild AU. Sasuke x Naruto, light.


A/N: Another mild AU one-shot. If I'd thought there were going to be so many of these when I started, I would have strung them together in the same story from the start. Oh, well. Again, Neji makes a very stilted appearance—for those who were wondering, these stories are conceived in a school-like setting, with Neji as dorm leader or whatever position gives him a small measure of authority. Anyway, this story was based on a pair of pictures, and the pairing is intended but light as usual. Please enjoy.

Warnings: None.

Pairing: Sasuke x Naruto, light.

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These were the colors of summer.

June had come to the world at last, and it had come in yellow and blue, chasing the gray of spring's long rains into the realm of memory with the constant smile of its undaunted sun. The air was warm and close under its shining fingertips, but the sweetness of the season inherent in every breath made up for the heat, settling in eternal sheen across the fields—the fields that had given in to waves and waves of sunflowers, resting their heads against one another in the arms of a passing breeze.

The fences kept them in, but the colors didn't stay inside those lines; Sasuke walked the path between the sunflower fields and all he could see was yellow and blue, the yellow of the flowers and the great arch of the endless blue sky stretched to infinity overhead. The yellow of the petals marking his footprints and the blue of the t-shirt that flickered against him in the breeze; the yellow hair and the bright blue eyes of the figure running in his direction along the shifting grass, waving one hand over his head.

"Sasuke! Sasuke, hey! Over here!"

Sasuke shook his head at the summons, the summons Naruto would fulfill by himself in a moment, and kept his pace steady, moving in time to the wind and the sunflowers rippling in the fields around him. The sunflowers were in Naruto's arms, too, leaving the golden signature of their smiles against his black shirt as a few of them tumbled from his excited hold.

"Sasuke! I thought you weren't coming out here," Naruto said, searching for breath as his feet stopped just short of Sasuke's own.

Sasuke shrugged. "I changed my mind."

Naruto grinned, adjusting the stems curled within his arms. "It's cool, right? All the sunflowers?"

Sasuke looked at that glowing smile, brighter than the brilliant fields and the new summer sun, and wondered if the sunflowers were what he had come to see. He shrugged again. "Why aren't you with Neji?" he asked, turning his eyes to the road before them. "Didn't he come with you?"

"Neji's being a stick-in-the-mud," Naruto said, kicking the husk of a dry sunflower with one restless foot. "He won't come into the field with me. Said it's against the rules."

"It is against the rules," Sasuke replied.

Naruto made a face at him. "Not you, too!" Then the smile was back on his lips, such a simple transition that it stole whatever weight his wrinkled nose had carried. "I'm not going to hurt anything. I just want to walk around in there. Just for a minute." Bright blue eyes were searching his, searching for a matching smile. "You'll come with me, right, Sasuke? Just for a minute?"

It was against the rules for Sasuke, too. Sasuke meant to tell him that. He had opened his mouth to say it when Naruto's hand caught hold of his, abandoning a few more sunflowers to the lay of their feet to get his fingers tangled between Sasuke's, the way he always did. His hand was warm—as warm as his eyes, and the curve of his smile—and between the warmth in Naruto and the warmth resonating in the world around him Sasuke lost the words, losing track, for a moment, of all but the hand in his. Losing track of the sunflowers becoming footsteps behind them as Naruto forgot his souvenirs and led his companion toward the fence, grinning as the sun got into his hair and set it glowing around his face.

"Come on, quick. Before Neji comes back and throws a hissy fit."

Naruto clambered over the old wooden fence and Sasuke followed him, close enough that their hands didn't come apart as the obstacle disappeared. Then they stepped into a row and the sky all but vanished, blocked out by the gently nodding faces of the sunflowers that stood taller than Naruto and taller than Sasuke, too, covering the sun with their open arms. Sasuke didn't miss the sun, though. All the light that it would have given was in the smiles of the sunflowers, and in Naruto's smile as well, tossed back to him over one excited shoulder.

Naruto laughed, the sound hushed in their ears as its echoes evaporated into the folds of the field. "Whoa. Look how tall they are. They're like twice as big as me!"

Sasuke smirked. "You're short."

"Hey!"

Naruto had found a fallen sunflower, somewhere along the nestled row, and Sasuke found it in his face now, an impromptu weapon against the passing insult. "Take it back," Naruto demanded, striking the sunflower against his companion's head—but through the flush of yellow petals and the brush of the sunflower's face over his, Sasuke could see that Naruto was still smiling, and that hand was still in his, locked tight between his fingers as their laughter wrestled for the long green stem. Then Sasuke found the sunflower in his hand, and Naruto turned and ran—and though their hands fell apart, he could still feel that warmth pressed into his palm, and so he ran, too, swinging at Naruto's back.

"Hey, that was my sunflower! Sasuke! No fair!"

Sasuke laughed, as Naruto was laughing, and kept his gaze on his companion's back, waiting for those bright blue eyes to come in search of his again. When they did, and when Naruto's feet stopped, he stopped as well, heedless of the hand that swept the sunflower out of his grasp and surrendered it to the ground. Heedless of that hand until it formed around his own again, as though he were the harbor that Naruto's fingers would always come back to.

"Jerk," Naruto accused, under eyes that didn't mean it. Sasuke raised an eyebrow.

"You started it."

"No way!" Naruto leapt at his companion, wrestling with one of Sasuke's arms—but his smile gave it away for what it was, a passing playfulness, and in a moment he had stopped, the squabble discarded in favor of a new thought. "Hey. We must be really far out in the field now, right?" Sasuke nodded, and Naruto beamed back at him. "Let me up on your shoulders. I want to look around."

"No thanks," Sasuke said.

"Sasuke! Come on, come on! Let me up."

The scuffle resumed for a moment, fought with words and softening hands this time instead of sunflowers. All the same it only took a minute before Naruto was up on Sasuke's back, both arms looped around his neck and a shining smile on his face. "Cool! I can see over the tops of them," he called, his voice far louder than was necessary to reach the black eyes pinned on his face, watching the sunlight and the sunflowers making it ever brighter.

"How far are we from the path?" Sasuke asked, tightening his arms around Naruto's legs.

"Not that far. I can see somebody walking that way. Looks kind of like Neji."

Naruto grinned down at him, and Sasuke smiled, feeling the full warmth of the boy's weight against his back; watching as Naruto became just another sunflower, his yellow hair and his sky-blue eyes right at home in the rhythm of the field. Then Naruto laughed and separated himself from the sunflowers again, that familiar sound following his fingers into Sasuke's hair.

"Hey, look, Sasuke. You've got sunflower petals in your hair." He pulled a few of the yellow flecks loose and dropped them in front of Sasuke's face, his smile warm and welcome in the summer sunlight.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "How do you think they got there?"

"Beats me," Naruto said, resting his chin on the top of Sasuke's head as he dismissed his own handiwork. Sasuke rolled his eyes. Then he closed them altogether and took a moment just to listen: to the wind making its slow way through the field of sunflowers, and to the breaths that had settled into his ear, each one soft and warm under the soothing spell of the afternoon.

"Hey, Sasuke?"

"Hm."

"Thanks."

Sasuke's eyes came open, finding in a heartbeat the pair of bright blue above him. "For what?"

Naruto shrugged. "Just thanks."

Sasuke watched him for a moment, silent as the sunflowers tipping their heads in to eavesdrop. Then he smiled.

"Sure."

Naruto smiled, too. Sasuke thought he liked that smile. He liked it until Naruto's eyes, wandering over the field once more, became very wide and he struggled to get down, sliding off none too gracefully and landing on his back before adrenaline got him up again.

"Shoot! That _was_ Neji! He saw me—we've gotta go!"

"Go where?" Sasuke asked—but he asked it out of breath, because Naruto had grabbed his hand and started to run again, dragging him along through the arms of the sunflowers.

"Back to the buses. I think we can beat him. Come on!"

Sasuke didn't know which direction the buses were. He knew Naruto didn't either. But he didn't care very much, not when Naruto turned back to smile at him through the waves of yellow and blue that surrounded them on every side—through the waves of the colors of summer, swirling around him like the wind in their hair, like the warmth tingling up his arm from the fingers caught between his own.

"Sunflowers are the best. You like them, too, Sasuke?"

Sasuke did.


End file.
